How To Make CLAY from DIRT

This video was sponsored by

Casper.com the company that made my mattress the one my wife and I have used for the last two and a half years

I have put a link down in the description so that you can get one of these super comfortable mattresses for yourself

And if you use the code “The King of random” during checkout you will receive a further fifty dollar discount on the price

Hey, what’s up guys welcome back to the lab!

I have a very exciting DIY project for you today

Because I am going to show you how to dig in the depths of the earth and make your own clay

Now this project here is inspired a few years ago, when I stumbled across a channel called primitive

Technology all about a boy in Australia who goes out in the forest and uses nothing

But the materials around him to build cool things like houses

Looms and even metal foundries and the basis for all its experiments involved clay a few years ago

This really makes me think if we were stranded in the middle of nowhere. What exactly would it be

Take to do some good clay that is exactly what we are exploring in this video today

Now gather the material for this experiment today

I just went down to the local river and walked along the riverbed

I found a nice place under the bridge where there is a lot of traffic

Took a second to enjoy the scenery and then began to dig down in the dirt as close to the water as I felt comfortable

now is the reason why I went for dirt through the Riverbed because clay is sedimentary which means it flows down to the lowest point and

Well, I actually have won clay from dirt from my backyard

I think

It is much better at the river so take a trip down your local river grab some dirt

And you want to look for the dirt that when you squish this kind is that plastic you feel it sticks together

In a big lump, you can find something like that. You are well on your way to making clay so here

We are boys that we have a nice little amount of dirt here and the first thing you notice is it

Is it is not very clean. There are all kinds of rocks

There is sand There is little sticks and twigs this stuff is very dirty and although you can squish it and put it in different

form

It is not super clean you can see through all organic substances and those large pieces of rocks

So to actually pick up the clay from this dirty mixture

we are going to need to put it through a very simple process and the only thing is that we are going to realize that or

A few different containers and a little water

So quick update guys you can see that

I added a bit of water to this mixture

And I use my glove just reach down there and stir it around

What we are actually doing is that we break all the different parts in the dirt itself. We have rocks

We have sand we have clay we have organic materials and what happens when we mix with water that they separate their different layers

Now the course of time the clay and send already to the bottom, so we want to do, stir this is powerful

I will get everything suspended and then give it about five

Seconds to settle and then transfer all the liquid into a separate container Look what happens when I do

Sweet now if we stop pouring here

You can see that the bulk of the heavy stuff is left. Behind when we look down the bucket. You can see gravel rocks everything

That is heavy you can even have a bit of sand left here on the bottom of the bin, so we essentially take this stuff and we

Can throw it away because we do not intend to have these big stones for after now is all the stuff

That in this liquid here is now the second passage is coming a little different

We need something like a sieve you could use your shirt you can use your socks or in this case

I’m just going to use a sieve for convenience

We are going to continue and clean out this container

After that we are going to pour this liquid through the sieve back into it and hopefully that will remove most of the organic material

Almost looks like concrete gravel

very cool

So I have washed and clean up this way bucket

We got our little sieve here as I said you can use your shirt or any kind of cloth material

We just try to press out those organic substances, but remember that before we pour this solution through the sieve

It is very important to stir it up and shake all those clay particles in suspension in the water again

So you can see as soon as we stretch everything out

We have left behind a lot of organic material, we have sticks leaving something that floats slightly to the surface

and if you want to be extra careful

You can continue and clean your sieve and filter it again to catch everything you might miss

Oh

Start looking a bit like chocolate milk

What is interesting about this is every time we pour it back and forth you notice

there is a kind of one

left standing remains that is because the sand is actually heavier than the clay and sinks to the bottom reports, so

theoretically now if we have two containers

And we just transfer it back and forth and clean the stand every time

Eventually most of that sand will be reduced. We are going to have a very fine clay. So here. We are boys

What we now have is a bucket full of clay water, in essence they had a bit of sand

Used weight and density of the materials in filtering out the rocks

We used a filter to filter out most of the organic materials and so now we only have a solution of clay suspended in water

And the longer we leave this the more of that sand and clay will go down to the bottom now

We do not want the clay to actually settle down

We want to unpack that for the first time so I am going to do now is to use these two containers to cycle them back and forth and extract

the layers of Sand every time we do and

While they are doing that it is a good time to descend to the description and click on the link to check out Castro mattresses my wife

And I have been using our cast for thick mattresses for more than 2 and a half years and until now

It is still the most comfortable mattress

We have ever used it

So here is the deal, while dirty rocks and clay are pretty cool to play with they are not super comfortable and when you sleep

Do some quick math you will realize about one third of your life is spent sleeping in bed

Some people even have more than that, so treat your body well and get your sleep in comfort

It is a very worthy investment

Casper is here to help create beautiful and comfortable mattresses

Even more affordable for you when you click on the link in the description and use promo code the king of random

You will receive another $ 50 discount

And if you’re still a little more convincing check this out buying a castro mattress is entirely without risk

you literally buy the mattress online they deliver to your house you can get to try it for a hundred days to see if it is

Worth your money if you do not end up like that they send someone to come pick it up

And they will refund all your money

Just like that, of course, the chances are that you are going to love it

And if you live in the US or Canada they will ship it to your house for free

It shows at your door in a very small box that will make you wonder how they even get there

I stripped all the sheets from the bed so that you can see after two and a half years

This is still the mattress that we use it is really a comfortable mattress

It is very nice to sleep at his office

But soft enough to get a good night’s sleep and for some reason when I sleep in someone else’s house or to a hotel where I seem

To come back pain and a bit of a headache that never happens with my casper mattress

I also like to sleep a little cooler at night

I do not like to sleep in sweat

And this mattress is breathable which helps prevent this from happening

Kasper understands the importance of really loving your mattress before you fully commit to it and using the internet they cut the duration

retailers and let the savings on you their in-house team of engineers have spent thousands of hours developing the Casper to the point where it is

Considered obsessively designed, and that is paid off, because after more than

25,000 reviews it has a score of 4.9 stars

It is fast becoming favorite mattress of the internet

casper the design developed and assembled in the US and uses a combination of supporting memory foam that it just the right sink in net

the right Bounce plus

It is breathable and helps to regulate your temperature during the night So in short get a luxury mattress and a very reasonable price

Right on your door so that you can sleep on it for a hundred nights

So make sure you absolutely love it, and if you do not come they pick it up and give you all your money back

So treat your body well and invest in a Casper mattress today

You have nothing to lose and a lifelong better sleep gets to win the link is in the description and with that said let’s leave

back to making our clay

there we have a guys I donated this back and forth about four times taking a little bit of fine sand every time we

Now we can continue this process almost endlessly

We are just getting at this point on some of that really fine sludge, but here

We have a relatively clear relatively fine

Clay water and the only thing we really need to do with this now is it down at a counter where it will not be

Disturbed for about an hour to give the layers a chance to just separate for fun

We had some leftover water, so I transfer that to another container

I’m just going to put these here, so we can watch them over a period of time and see how they settle

Quick update guys that we have left for about five hours now. You can see that the clay is so fine

That is actually taking quite a bit of time for the water to rise even up to this level if we leave this alone

Maybe a day or so, I am sure that the clay even more we would compress more water at the top however

There is a faster way to get water than that now the first thing

We need to do this is water that we are on top of the top and there are a few ways we can do it

That we can just tilt it over and pour it out or we can use something like a siphon to try and suck it out

Now both options are her pros and it is cons

But in the end, everything we want to do is make sure that we have this clay here without any of these stuff here

So first something else, I’m just going to take this long glass here

We are just going to topple this very slowly very carefully to get as much of that water out of the top as we can

I’m just going to pour off the top layer that will extract clay just as well for most of that water

And we call it pretty good there

The biggest part of that is going to be really fine clay. We can see that it is very moist

So we have to clean up with a towel

Now the second method of extracting this water is transferring we can use this to suck up the liquid here

But before it touches our mouth we can dump it here and gravity will suck everything out very similar to a vacuum cleaner

now even more of the moisture from our clay we want to use something like a towel or a shirt to get something that

Very close and has a lot of fiber in this case. I’m going to take this towel

I’m going to double it about itself

we almost want a piece of dust that the clay will not go through we want it all in when staying care

Possibly so got a little improvised filter here

We will hopefully pour this one

It is tight enough that the clay will keep inside so that we can tie it in a ball

we can hang it and leave it

Atmosphere suck the moisture out of it for a couple of hours until we have just left with the clay itself

You can see this towel once

It is sucked down

But we do not want it and hopefully this is thick enough that it does not really intend to

Go through the towel itself. We want to be able to pick this up and be very little or nothing

Passing through the bottom of the box

We want it all to stand so it looks good so far, even wanting to press that clearly in the

Wild in nature you would not clamor, but you can improvise something else

We just do not want the towel to actually suck down into the bucket here. We go with the round two

From now on get heavy

We’re going beautiful there. There is all our clay in our towel

And we’re just going to fold this band off and hang it for a bit

Now, if everything goes well, we want to take all the edges of this towel and fold them all together

And make a nice ball of liquid look. I just fill in. It’s okay. We can save it

Here we go. It looks very good very well

Okay, so we got our Slipknot and now everything I have to do is shake. Shake it. Shake. Shake the shake

Does not have to be clean this has to be functional

There, what do you think?

Okay, so this is pretty much what we’re going for guys

We got our clay wrapped in the towel, and you can see some dripping liquids

But a large part of it is relatively clean water

It does not have the clay in it because the clay is trapped by the fibers on the inside of cloth

Now, if we just let hang for a few hours most that moisture is going to come out

We must be left with a nice ball of clay

Alright boys. We are back

It is about an hour since we took our bag outside and let it hang from the railing

now in the interests of time

I actually did squeeze the bag a little to help encourage a bit of that moisture to come out a bit faster

In addition, I sacrificed a bit of the clay itself, but I do not think it’s about compromising the proof-of-concept

so here we are with our towel with most of the water being squeezed out as we now open something and take one

Look into it

You can see that a large part of the clay on the upper Edges has started to harden

And it is very plastic the stuff on the inside is still very liquidy. It is a bit like runny nose

Diarrhea as we left this out exposed to the air eventually that moisture would evaporate and the clay would become difficult

However, there is a way. We can speed things up

There is a way we can cheat and everything we need is a little paper towel

All we are going to do is rip off a few sheets of paper towel fold this double I go down on stick

In the table like this we are going to create our clay put it in the middle of our paper towel

And we are actually just going to flatten it

The paper towel removes a large part of the moisture from the clay and as soon as it reaches the consistency

We are looking for we can release the paper towel and wrap our clay in Saran wrap or a plastic bag for later use

now again

If you do not have a paper towel all you have to do is just let it sit in the open air a bit

Longer and let it evaporate on its own, but we are only using this technique to speed up the process a bit

I’m just going to take a few more sheets of paper towel

Place them over the top and flatten it out from the top

To help you absorb the moisture a bit faster from here too, and now just as simple as that

Oh wow. I love this peel this back and take a look at this we have some very nice

beautiful

ready-to-use clay just closed and

Mold in the palm of your hand that

Is amazing this stuff is very malleable. It is very easy to work with very plastic

You can use this to make a bowl a jar a little dish pretty much anything you want if you make a countertop

With a smooth surface you can go and throw it in the kitchen counter and just work it around a bit

Help work out one of the bubbles bursting the crevices and things of that nature

Now if your clay gets a bit, too

is dry you can add a little more water to work around to make a bit more plastic in the other side, if

It is too wet you can just leave it in the open air for a few hours to evaporate and

Hardening itself now before we did this experiment?

I went to the river and I got a lot more mudd from this river

And I let it stand in five-liter buckets over a period of three days

And I changed it in this now this piece of clay

I worked back and forth a bit more

I got more of the sand and I let it sit at night

Until all the water came to the top made it a bit easier to work with and you can feel

If you just put your finger along the side of this it feels almost rubbery

It has a very plastic texture when we cut it with something like a fork or a spoon

You can see how it peels now

You can work this you can roll it you can use it to make pottery

dishes pretty much everything you want when you put this fire in an oven or an oven the right temperature you put into

Pottery as a Terracotta planter pot and possibly even ceramic

So here you have the boys we have successfully turned river mud into blocks of clay that we can now use to turn into pottery

Pottery and possible fire in ceramic all things that we are going to try to do in future project videos

Let’s quickly Recap. How we got here

We started this project this morning by going to the river and pulling dirt and rocks straight out of the Riverbank?

We brought the dirt home

We put it in a bucket of water, and we swirled it around until everything was broken up

Then we let it sit for a few seconds and pour all that dirty water in a second container our first one

Observation was that everything was heavy behind all the rocks left the pebbles and most of the heavy sand next to we grabbed a sieve

We poured all the water to help draw from organic materials such as leaf sticks or something floating on the top

Which in a survival situation would also work with a piece of clothing as your shirt?

We transferred the water back and forth a few times

Trying to get as much of the sense that we could and we left with a very dirty gray water that we ended up with

Transfered to a towel

Pulled in all four ends to form a ball tied with a string and let it hang on the railing we

Let it sit outside for about an hour when we squeeze the bag to help get rid of excess moisture where we brought in

Open the towel and saw that we had a very muddy clay

We transferred that clay to a paper towel to absorb even more moisture

Scraped it off and ended up with this a beautiful ball of clay that we can put into what we want

So there you have the guys who is how you go down to the river to take the mud and turn it into a free

Processed clay at home what we ultimately do with this stuff is entirely up to you

So let me know what you want to see in the comments below. Thank you for joining us for this experiment today

We will look for you next Doc you then?

Okay, guys a quick memory. There is a link in the description at this time to give yourself a casper mattress

luxury sleeping experience with a hundred a free trial when you go to the checkout

Do not forget to use promo code to get the king of random $ 50 from the mattress of your choice. Good night sleep well

You immediately see towel. Oh there

It makes a nice moldable clay as easy as it really does not look like chocolate milk

And clay is not really that bad for your diet. No, it’s really bad. Do not drink it you can put it on your face